Joining the game and the experiment in peer-to-peer remote laboratories for STEM education

Remote Access Laboratories (RAL) provide access to experimental setups from remote locations. These experimental setups are composed of controller units programmed to gather data and interact with user inputs. A distributed version of RAL can be maker oriented i.e. the experiment rigs are designed by individuals and shared among each other. This paper presents the programming aspects and activity user interface (UI) design and organization of experiments in a distributed RAL aims at STEM education. The user interface must be interactive to increase engagement and motivation for the user. Being designed for school students, the environment to create the control logic of a rig created by the student needs to be on a homogenous platform. The programming language has to be easy to understand and use. Characteristics and requirements of a graphical programming language SNAP, which is modified and used as the programming platform for RAL, is studied in this paper.